


βασίλισσα (Queen)

by firecat



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Abduction, Consent, Desire, F/M, Loss of Innocence, Magic Belt, Possible misuse of ancient Greek language, Power Dynamics, Underworld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 09:46:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29258412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firecat/pseuds/firecat
Summary: Hades abducts Persephone, but claiming her against her will is another matter.
Relationships: Hades/Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 42
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	βασίλισσα (Queen)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theatricalities](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theatricalities/gifts).



Demeter gives the belt to Persephone. “It may not be removed against your will. And I beg you to vow never to take it off, κόρη (Kore),” she says, using her love-name for her daughter, the one that means “maiden.” “As long as you wear it, he won’t gain power over you. He won’t be able to seduce you.”

Persephone lies in bed that night, fingering the belt her mother told her never to take off. She imagines a god who is so powerful, he can cause death. A god no one can ever avoid forever, not even the Olympians. What must such a god look like? Surely, he would be dark, like the realm he rules over. He would have black hair, wavy, like the waters of the River Styx that wends its way to his domain. He would have a gaze that fixes you, that compels you (if you don’t have Demeter’s magic belt) to do what he bids you. He would be used to having his way in everything. Taking what he wanted. 

Young and inexperienced in the ways of love and courtship and kisses and the other things that accompany them, but old enough to long for such experience, Persephone is thrilled by the vision her mind has engendered.

Demeter is wise in the ways of human beings and gods, and she has told Persephone of what it means to be the power behind the throne. How, even in a society apparently ruled by men, a woman can wield the ultimate power. The man needs to _seem_ as if he were making the decisions, but that is all. “Never let a man take you for granted,” Demeter tells her. “Always keep him guessing. Demand what you want, and if he gives it to you, reward him handsomely. But only then.”

“What can I give a man who is a ruler, that he doesn’t already have?” 

“It’s very simple,” says Demeter. And she explains. 

===

Persephone follows her mother’s advice to wear the belt at all times, for she and Demeter know he is to come soon. A nymph whispered to them: Zeus has given Hades permission to take Persephone. The nymph insisted that the word used was not “wed” but “abduct.” Therefore, they know what is planned, but not the day and manner of it. They endeavor to stay together, because Demeter wants to give her child the best chance she can to resist, or if not that, to negotiate the terms of her captivity. 

But perhaps Hades has a way to track their movements, for Persephone is alone, experimenting with creating all manner of flower gardens, when he comes.

His arrival is a sight to behold. With much shaking, a great cleft forms in the earth, and a chariot bursts through. It is pulled by the largest pair of stallions Persephone had ever seen — more the size of the war elephants she’s heard whispers of. The horses are black like the chariot, so black that the eye seems to slide right off them. And their nostrils snort fire. 

The chariot is wrought round with trim of gold. Persephone cannot see the pattern in the trim at first, but when the chariot pulls near her, she realizes it is the circle in the goblet, the symbol of the underworld. 

Persephone still thinks of the belt she is wearing as a protection against the God in the chariot, so she is shocked when a great hand seizes her belt and hauls her into the monstrous conveyance by means of it. 

She has time to release only one heart-rending cry of surprise and refusal, before the earth splits open again and the fire-breathing black stallions plunge her and her abductor back under the surface of the world. They are invisible now to the eye of Helios, the surveyor of all that lives.

Helios knows that she has been taken, however, because he sees a great blight upon the greenery of the earth, spreading out in all directions from the spot where she was taken. And he hears Demeter’s anguished cries. Once again the Olympians have simply reached out and snatched, for their own cruel pleasures, disregarding the right and proper homage due those deities who make the world hospitable to all that live upon it. She will not let this pass without making a stand against it. And, though she grieves that her stand will harm some of the people she cherishes, there is no way she knows of to sway the Olympians than to put their precious humans in danger, that they might hear their cries for mercy.

===

Persephone doesn’t understand at first.

Even with the belt on, it seems to take all of her strength of will to resist Hades.

The belt is supposed to protect her from the formidable powers of seduction that Hades is said to have. Demeter told her it would render her immune to his ability to slip into the minds of humans and gods alike, and bend them to his will. That ability which was said to explain why some beautiful young people suddenly turned their faces to the wall and died, or ran wild and killed those they once loved, or went roaming into the streets, no longer mindful of their own safety, to be set upon by thieves, rapists, and slave traders. It was Hades laying his claim upon them, said those they left behind. And they prayed to Zeus, lamenting that he allowed Hades to act, to take those whose time had not yet come. It was not that they objected to his ruling over the dead, they told the All-Father. It was that they objected to his snatching people to his realm before their time.

Some time after the abduction, Hades appears before Persephone, and she is able to look full upon him for the first time. She beholds his black tunic with the gold trim, and the red straps of his sandals encircling his muscular feet and calves, and the smoldering look in his eye as he beholds her in her thin white linen gown. She feels moved to the very core of her being. She wants this powerful god to take her as if she belongs to him and not to herself and to the world. She wants him around her, inside her, and knows such a union would nourish her as nothing before in her young life ever has. 

The long black ringlets of Hades’s hair cascade down his back. He looks younger than she imagined a king of the dead would look — if he had been human, perhaps thirty years of age, near the prime of his body’s power, and with the experience that comes of unstinting use of that body in the pursuit of his goals, including that of pleasure. 

His face twists in a smile at once inviting and predatory. She’s riveted by his hands, large and muscular as those of a sculptor or a tamer of horses. It’s as if she can already feel them moving on her body, claiming her.

“Persephone,” he says, and in his mouth her name becomes a dark prayer. “So long have I worshipped you, your innocent, youthful beauty. Now I would take that innocence and replace it with pleasure. Pleasure you’ve never dreamed of. Will you consent to be mine? Mine and mine alone?”

Persephone’s answer is on her lips, although she had spent no time imagining how to formulate it. 

“You may take my innocence, dark god,” she replies. “But not my life. Not my person. I do not consent to be yours and yours alone. I do not consent to stay in your realm forever.”

“May I try to convince you of the wonders of my realm, κόρη?” he asks. She knows not how he learned of her love-name. “May I ask you again to be mine, in three months time?”

“You may ask,” Persephone says. 

Hades takes her to a chamber where every luxury the Earth can produce is on display. The furniture is made of lapis lazuli and serpentine and onyx. She touches the cushions on the bed, formed of ironstone, and they give under her touch, a viscous liquid rippling within. They are filled with rock oil, he explains, although he does not enlighten her as to what that might be. Warmth and a pleasing red glow spread from the very rock of which the chamber is carved. It comes from a molten unguent within the earth that will last a thousand, thousand years, he tells her. There is light within the chamber, dancing back and forth among multiple clear crystals, entering each on one side as a pure white beam, and exiting on the other as every color Persephone has ever known.

“I hope you now see that my Realm is more than only death and gloom and gibbering spirits,” Hades tells her. In his eyes she sees wonder and joy, and she wants to give him her innocence more than ever.

“I do,” she says, and looks full upon his face, so fearsome to mortals and the gods of the light. She sees desire, his, and hers reflected in him. 

Then all at once his tunic and sandals are gone, and he stands before her in the body formed by his Titan mother and father. He is broad and muscular, and black hair covers all of his reddish skin, except for that member which rises between his legs, the one her mother explained about. It is so large that Persephone cannot imagine taking it within her. But she wants to try with every particle of her being. She momentarily envies Cronos for having been able to devour his son, even though he paid for it by imprisonment in Tartarus, that realm of the dead lying so deep within the earth that even Hades’s rule does not reach there. 

Hades takes one step toward Persephone, looking down at her, as if she’s a waterfall his thirst demands to swallow all in one gulp. He’s only a little taller than she, but it feels as if he’s towering over her. She places her palm on his chest and feels his heart racing for her.

“Take off your belt and your gown, κόρη,” he says, in a voice neither of inquiry nor of command.

“I must not take off the belt,” she tells him. “Otherwise, do as you will with me.”

She understands then. 

The belt does prevent Hades from seducing her against her will. But it doesn’t prevent anything she herself desires.

Hades rips the gown from her body with one swift movement of his hands. For a second time he grips the belt to pull her toward him. His mouth descends upon hers.

She will never be called κόρη again, she realizes some time later.

But soon she will be called βασίλισσα (Queen).


End file.
